


back and forward

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band), TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Past Relationship(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 00:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: After one year of service, the military’s Kang Younghyun feels more like his real self than Young K or even Brian. Is there any other version of himself than the one with buzzed hair and dull skin staring back at him from the mirror in his barracks?2023. Younghyun's in the military when he reunites with his ex, Twice's Nayeon. Life keeps moving forward, and sometimes you look back and discover you've drifted somewhere entirely different than you planned.





	back and forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hachimitsuto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hachimitsuto/gifts).



> For our friends' crackship holiday gift exchange. This is set in an Alternate Reality future and does not try to predict what life in 2023 will be ~really like~.
> 
> Shida, I'm so happy I got the chance to write for you!! I wish this fic could be even better but as part of #teamprocrastinators I'm sure you're not surprised I procrastinated too long on it lol. So glad we could reconnect this year <3 I hope you enjoy this fic!

_2023_

 

Kang Younghyun—not Young K, not _Brian_ , but Kang Younghyun—adapts to military life more quickly than he should probably be comfortable with. He enjoys the regimented, methodical nature of it—his feet pounding the earth for his morning run, the tedium of his post, the aching of his muscles as his unit drills formations and learns a thousand different ways to kill a hypothetical man. Not so hypothetical, the way people are talking lately about rising tensions and hostile actions from the north. If he opens the Internet or turns on the television, all he sees are long commentaries and frantic speculations. It’s as if the whole country is holding its breath, and Younghyun repeats the rhythm of each day by necessity, living life to the rhythm of the military’s thrumming bass.

 

After one year of service, the military’s Kang Younghyun feels more like his real self than Young K or even Brian. _Is_ there any other version of himself than the one with buzzed hair and dull skin staring back at him from the mirror in his barracks? He’s built up more muscle and his face has gotten thinner and his old self, the one who posed for photo shoots with a face caked in makeup and monitored the previews for the angle of shadows under his jaw, seems like someone else altogether.

 

He feels this way until the day his friend sidles up to him as he makes his bunk and says, “Are you going tonight?”

 

“Going to what?”

 

“The _show?”_ His friend grins broadly, obviously wanting something. “I thought you knew them, man.”

 

Younghyun frowns, trying to figure out what his friend could possibly be referring to, and with such an eager gleam in his eyes. “Who?”

 

“Twice!” His friend’s eyes go wide and now a few of the others are looking their way. “You _do_ know them, right? You weren’t lying to me?”

 

Now the memory of the poster returns to him—he’d glanced at it a few weeks ago as he stumbled back into the barracks late at night, exhausted from the day’s tasks. “Yeah, I know them,” Younghyun says, trying not to snap as he says it. He can’t figure out why his friends’ interest makes him want to lash out, irritation crawling over his skin like an unscratchable itch.

 

“So you’ll introduce us?”

 

“Sure,” Younghyun lies.

  
  


He sneaks into the performance after his friends have all already gone into the venue, and hides at the back of the crowd. The stage is empty, but after a few moments the music starts and the crowd of soldiers begins to roar.

 

Younghyun watches them walk on and take their places. At the end of the line is Nayeon, in a white skin-tight dress with her hair spilling down her back. She’s smiling so brightly he can feel his heart stuttering in his chest, and of course she has the first line of this new song he’s never heard. He can’t even hear it now, because as soon as she lifts the microphone to begin, the soldiers scream so loudly it drowns out everything else.

 

He settles for observing. The choreography is sexier than anything they’ve done that he remembers, and they perform it well, but he can’t appreciate the show the way everyone else around him can. He’s a man and he’d be lying if he said that the choreography and their glittery costumes don’t stir something in him, but he recognizes the attraction and tries to ignore it because the fantasy won’t hold up when he sees them later, bundled in coats and sitting backstage in silence, staring at their phones and counting up the calories of every snack offered to them.

 

He tries not to look at Nayeon at all.

 

After an eternity, their set finishes and another group takes the stage. He slips away before any of his friends find him and drifts through the clumps of people standing around outside smoking cigarettes and laughing, back around to the far side of the venue where he spots, as he expected, one of Twice’s managers talking on his phone. The manager brightens up as soon as he sees Younghyun, and after a bit of small talk, they go inside.

 

Jeongyeon notices him first. “Brian-oppa!” she yells out, a teasing twinkle in her eye, and the others all look up from their phones.

 

“You look so _manly,”_ Sana jokes, rubbing her palm over his short hair.

 

“Thanks, I think,” he returns. The jokes continue, and none of them ask if he’s worried about going to war or if he wishes he hadn’t gone into active duty now that things are the way they are. They stick with silly topics. It feels like they’re all acting out the reunion they should be having.

 

Nayeon doesn’t look up at all. He pretends not to notice.

 

They offer him food which he doesn’t have the stomach for, and as he goes through an elaborate refusal he watches Nayeon in his peripheral vision get up and walk outside. If the others see her, too, they don’t say anything.

 

“Are you scared?” Jihyo asks after a while, looking small in her puffy coat.

 

Younghyun smoothes his hands on his uniform. Outside the cracked-open door, he can see the first flakes of snow starting to fall.

 

“No,” he says, with a fake smile. “It will turn out okay in the end, I think.”

  
  


He finds Nayeon standing outside the door under a large lamp, with the hood of her coat up as she smokes a cigarette. Below the coat her legs are bare and her heels stick in the accumulating snow.

 

“When did you pick that up?” He asks, nodding toward the cigarette.

 

She blows smoke into the dark. “Recently.”

 

“Bad habit.”

 

She exhales smoke again and stamps her feet, a familiar pout curving across her lips. “None of your business,” she says, and sticks her tongue out at him, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

 

They haven’t spoken in a long time. At least a year. He watches snowflakes catch in her hair, and then realizes by the color that he’s looking at fake hair extensions. She drops the cigarette into the snow and stamps it out with the toe of her shoe.

 

“You’re right,” he says. “None of my business.” He tries not to shiver. She still won’t look at him directly, her eyes darting here and there. When she finally does look at him, he can’t read her expression.

 

“Damn it, Brian,” she says. “Why are you in active duty?”

 

“It was the right thing to do.”

 

She shakes her head and glares into the distance. “You don’t always need to be the hero,” she says. She looks at him again, her lips pursed together, and then she shakes her head and walks back to the warm waiting room, leaving him behind in the snow.

  
  


He dated Nayeon twice—once predebut, for three weeks. She dumped him for a new trainee who was, objectively, more handsome than him. That trainee is a successful dermatologist, now, and sometimes Younghyun sees him on posters and tries to remember what it was like when they were so young that they could grow up into anything. Unlike now, when what they will be is more or less determined.

 

The second time it was 2019, and he was lonesome and she was exhausted and it happened the way most things happened for people in their line of work: as a bright flame that flared up and fizzled out in a momentary flash. A few months of sneaking into back rooms to make out and falling asleep to the glow of her text messages on his phone, pretending he was having fun when really he was just going through the motions.

 

They weren’t really compatible, is what he said at the time. It was a relationship of convenience and proximity. No hard feelings. No reason to write any songs about her.

 

And yet here he is, thinking about her while he stares up at the ceiling in his dark barracks.

 

Sometimes, Younghyun doesn’t understand himself at all.

 

 

A week later he gets two days of vacation, and goes to the company building to sign some tax forms. He’s still making money on work done before entering the military, which makes him all the more grateful for the tactical decisions he’d made early in his career for the work he chose and the pieces he got his name on.

 

It’s early in the morning and hardly anyone is in the building. Most of the artists are at music show pre-recordings, most likely. The rest of his band is in the military except for Jae, who is in Los Angeles, and sometimes texts him odd pictures of sidewalks and hazy sky and _miss you, wish you were here_.

 

He signs the forms and goes to head back out into the chilly morning drizzle, but stops for a minute in a long hallway to take a look at the framed posters lining the wall. There’s a whole Day6 section at one end; he searches his own face for some kind of reassurance—what reassurance his past self can offer, he isn’t sure.

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

He looks up and Nayeon—of course—stands at the other end of the hall, glaring him down with what looks like disgust. Maybe it’s just the crinkle formed where her eyes meet her nose—he was always misinterpreting her and she him, which was probably part of why they flamed out so fast. _I don’t think this is going to work._ Younghyun, so used to being the one dumped, remembers how odd it felt to hear those words coming from his own mouth.

 

“Signing tax forms,” he says, straightening up and offering her a tentative smile. She stares back at him, skeptical. “Am I allowed to be here?” he asks.

 

“Well,” she sniffs, “I don’t know who’s defending our country if you’re lurking around here.”

 

“I thought you said I shouldn’t try to be the hero.” He feels his smile growing, in spite of himself. Being around her always reminds him why they got together as much as why it never worked—he just _likes_ her, specifically her way of always taking normal situations and turning them into something ridiculous. She always manages to make him laugh.

 

“You should do your job!” she says, but the bite is gone. She turns to the side, like she’s getting ready to leave, but hesitates.

 

“What are _you_ doing here?” he asks, before she can make up her mind. He takes in her oversized sweatshirt and skin-tight jeans and unstyled hair, bangs falling limply into her eyes.

 

She coughs. “Um,” she says, “Signing tax forms.”

 

He laughs. “The glamorous life of a pop star.”

 

She blinks and grins—a real grin, unchanged after all these years—and he can feel himself about to make a stupid decision.

 

But she gets there first. “You busy?” she asks, tilting her head. “I was thinking to go for a drive.”

  
  
  


Sometimes he thinks about the past. Mostly, he tries not to, but sometimes he can’t avoid it, and walking beside Nayeon out into the rain sends him back through the years to a time they’d stood outside in the back lot of a studio between pre-recordings, sheltered from curious eyes by thick coats and large umbrellas.

 

“Do you ever,” he’d said, staring at the jutting angles of high-rise buildings into the gray skyline, “feel like you’re going to miss out on something because you were so busy doing this?”

 

She’d looked at him with one eyebrow slightly raised. “Busy being famous, you mean?”

 

He’d grinned at her. “You’re more famous than me, after all. Maybe you have some advice.”

 

She’d looked at him, he remembers, like he was some sort of puzzle she didn’t really want to work out. “What are you afraid of missing that you don’t already have?”

 

He’d shrugged. “I don’t know. Something else.”

 

And she’d slipped one cold, wet hand through his, and rolled her eyes. “You think too much.”

 

Now he wonders if she would say the same thing. He follows her to her car, holding an umbrella up high although she never steps close enough to him to be fully covered.

 

Inside the car, his ears are suddenly flooded with silence and he sits for a minute, thinking about whether or not it means something that he’s sitting in her car now, after all this time. It probably doesn’t—it’s not like their relationship was ever that deep. Most of their time together wasn’t spent talking.

 

She gets into the car and starts driving without saying anything. He doesn’t quite know how to break the silence so he just waits, glancing at her every few minutes.

 

“What?” She demands.

 

“Nothing.”

 

She glances up at the rear view mirror and swings around a curve. He’d forgotten just how aggressive a driver she is until this moment. Maybe the new, abrasive Nayeon is just a natural growth out of these characteristics he’d seen before, but dismissed as peculiarities of the girl who was always cute, always bright, always in the center of everything.

 

“So,” she asks, glancing at him briefly. “Is Sungjin going to get married after he’s discharged?”

 

“Probably. They want to.” Younghyun shrugs and braces himself as Nayeon runs a red light. “Kind of depends on the—way things are going.”

 

He doesn’t want to say _whether or not we really go to war_. It still feels abstract and impossible, even as drills become more intense and the instructions of his senior officers more inscrutable. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if it really comes to war. He writes pop songs for a living. Military duty always seemed more like a rite of passage, a two-year mandatory break in the grind of entertainment. He managed to ignore what its real purpose was.

 

“Did he tell management yet?”

 

“It’s Sungjin,” Younghyun laughs. “He does whatever he wants.”

 

Nayeon snorts. “True. Wish I could do whatever I want.”

 

“Don’t you?” He teases back. She gives him a wry smile and rolls her eyes again.

 

“ _No_ ,” she says. “I do basically _nothing_ I want.”

 

He tries not to dwell too long on a memory of her sneaking into his hotel room when they were abroad on a company concert. That was all her idea, ruined when Jae came back early from bar crawling and she’d had to hide in the wardrobe until he fell asleep. _Sometimes_ she does do what she wants, he wants to say—but it seems beside the point, because for them, what they want has to be hidden from the public, most of the time.

 

“You know,” she says, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, “We’re coming up on the eight-year curse.”

 

“The what?”

 

“The eight-year curse. Girl groups have an expiration date. Like _milk_ .” She raises her eyebrows and gives a very fake grin to the stop sign she blows past. “What am I going to _do_?”

 

“I thought you wanted to go into acting?”

 

“There can only be so many idol actresses, and everyone’s being very cautious with their money these days.” She sighs. “I’m thinking to just become a socialite. Jihyo’s got the OST thing on lock, so I don’t really see what’s left for me to do.”

 

“I thought you, Momo, Mina, and Sana were going to do a sexy subunit.”

 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She rolls her eyes, a smile titling at the corner of her mouth. Then the smile fades. “They’re talking about going back to Japan.”

 

She doesn’t offer more explanation, but she doesn’t need to. Many foreign celebrities have found reason to promote in their home countries, as the predictions rolling across the news just get worse. It’s smart for them, smart for business. They have somewhere else to go.

 

“For what it’s worth,” he says, trying to lighten the mood, “I think you’ll be fine. You’re—an industry staple. The next Bae Suzy. What would Korea do without you on television?”

 

She blushes, looking pleased, but she glances at him and shrugs. “No one thought that Suzy would retire, but here we are.”

 

She has a point at that.

 

He realizes then that they’re heading for the mountains, passing from the thick concrete of the city streets and into more green and sky. Somehow the open spaces make him feel nervous. His vacation will end, soon, and here he is with a barely ex-girlfriend, driving to nowhere.

 

“Who are you dating now?” Nayeon asks.

 

He looks up, startled. “I’m not dating anyone.”

 

“You’re always dating someone.”

 

Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “That is a myth, started by my idiot bandmates. Half the songs are _Wonpil’s_ stories, did you know that?”

 

“Wonpil is is precious and innocent and he could never.”

 

“Well,” Younghyun says, leaning his head against the window, “I’m going to let you keep your delusions, I guess.”

 

“Thank you.” She glances over at him again. “So you’re telling me that you’re not even in love with anyone? Not even the teensiest, tiniest bit?”

 

He looks at her, chewing at her bottom lip as she speeds down the road. The sky is darker, now, threatening heavier rain, and the harsh glow of light reflected off the wet pavement casts her in a cold shadow.

 

“I never said that,” he tells her.

  


 

A long, long time ago, before he debuted, the company took all the trainees out into the countryside for their last big training event, an afternoon of team-building games and an evening of karaoke. They waved sparklers into the dark and shared their goals for the next year, the next three years, the next seven years. They lit lanterns and set them off into the night.

 

He found Nayeon off by herself behind the courtyard building, staring up at the stars like she was trying to read her fortune in their pattern. “What are you thinking about?” he asked, leaning against the wall next to her.

 

She looked at him with the prettiest smile. Pure happiness, unhindered by doubt or self-consciousness.

 

“We’ve worked really, really hard,” she said.

 

“Yes.”

 

“And now it’s all happening.”

 

“Mm-hmm,” he said, smiling at her.

 

She turned back to look at the stars again, grinning into the dark. “I just want to remember this. That’s all. Because maybe one day, I’ll forget how badly I wanted to be here. How I was willing to do anything, absolutely anything to get this.”

 

He considered her words and thought about the long hours they’d all put in, singing and dancing and, for him, practicing his bass until his fingers were numb. They’d endured too many assessments of how far they missed the mark on perfection, and then practiced until they could hit the mark.

 

He leaned back against the wall and turned to look at the stars, hoping to see something of what she saw. “I’m going to tell you a secret,” he said, tilting a smile in her direction. “I wanted to make music because I thought it would make girls like me.”

 

“That’s not a secret, Brian. To anyone.”

 

“I wasn’t _finished_ .” He nudged an elbow against her side and grinned. “What I'm trying to say is, I’m starting to realize that it’s a whole lot more than anything I used to imagine. It’s—we’ve got an audience, you know? People care about the music we make and we can make people _feel something_ for even just a few seconds in the middle of their busy lives. This job is important.”

 

She looked up at him with light sparkling in her eyes, and for just a moment, he could see that she really got it—what had brought them here, through all the long days and sleepless nights. Hope bloomed in the distance, a stunning future sprinkled out in the stars Nayeon was trying so hard to read.

 

Nayeon grinned. “And you can really stick it to your jerk ex-girlfriend.”

 

“There’s that, too.” He laughed and elbowed her again. “You’re right. We need to remember this.”

 

She looked at him, smiling again, and then leaned her head against his shoulder. They stood there for some time, looking out into the night.

  
  


Nayeon drives up the mountain until they reach an overlook marked for tourists. She pulls into a space and parks her car. Outside the window they can watch dusk overtake the city, which is visible only as an electric haze through the dark gray mist.

 

“It really made me mad the other day,” she says. “When you showed up after our performance.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say as he searches his memories for what could have upset her. He remembers her acting weird, but chalked it up to the awkwardness of unexpectedly running into your ex. This is something else, though. Something humming under the surface.

 

“Why?”

 

She looks at him and then turns, pulling her leg up into the seat so that she’s fully facing him. “You’re in the military, and we’re just,” she looks around, like she’s searching for an answer, “Doing the same damn thing we’ve been doing.”

 

He turns to face her now, too, considering this. “What you do is important.”

 

“Don’t patronize me,” she says, but she’s not angry. She leans her head against the seat and frowns like she’s trying not to cry. “It’s not important. Not the way it should be.”

 

He doesn’t know what to do, so he reaches out for her hand and strokes his thumb across the back. She doesn’t pull away, but moves to interlace their fingers, a warm and familiar gesture.

 

“It was important to me,” he says. “Seeing you. I didn’t really—I mean, I’ve gotten used to how things are now, I guess. I didn’t really notice until you all showed up.”

 

She watches their hands for a long moment before looking up at him again. “I miss the way things used to be.”

  
  


After that, things are different.

 

He starts texting with Nayeon during in his downtime, mostly dumb jokes and funny videos, but sometimes he calls her and they have odd, winding conversations about everything and nothing that is happening to them. She flies to Japan, Australia, the USA, back again. He completes his daily tasks and waits to hear what the powers-that-be will decide about the fate of his country.

 

Once he calls her and says, without prelude, “I’m sorry for the way I broke up with you.”

 

She’s silent on the other end of the phone for a long moment. He hears her say something to what sounds like a manager, then rustle to another location, before she finally whispers into the phone, “What?”

 

“I’m sorry.” He looks up at the tall trees surrounding him, the patch of night sky shining through the leaves, and the bright lamps illuminating the camp. “I didn’t think we were that serious.”

 

“Well,” she says, “We weren’t, then.”

 

“What about now?”

 

He listens to the sound of her breathing on the other end of the line.

 

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  


 

The weather warms, and by late summer, the news reporters begin singing a different tune. Maybe it won’t come to war, they are saying. Maybe the tensions can be resolved peacefully.

 

After another month, maybe turns into certainty. Agreements are signed. The country heaves a sigh of relief. And just like that, the cloud hanging over Younghyun dissipates. He’s discharged mid-autumn without much ceremony and he walks out the doors of the enlistment headquarters a free man, without any idea of what the hell he’s supposed to do now. He takes in a deep breath of crisp air.

 

He’d called Sungjin to give him a ride back into the city, but when he reaches the parking lot, he spots not Sungjin, but Nayeon leaning against the hood of her car and grinning at him.

 

“What are you doing here?” he asks, rubbing the back of his neck as he walks up to her.

 

She shrugs. “I didn’t have anything better to do.”

 

“You know,” he says, glancing around, “Just because I’m not famous enough to get a press release when I’m discharged, doesn’t mean photographers won’t show up.”

 

She shakes her head in fake dismay. “Your celebrity-disease is raging.”

 

“I’m just warning you.” He grins, still confused but happy to see her. Maybe everything isn’t quite as set-in-stone as he’s come to think.

 

“Eh,” she says. “I’ve still got this eight-year curse to worry about, and time’s almost up. So I figured, I’ve spent over a decade worrying about _everything_. Maybe I should start doing what I want every now and then.”

 

“And what is it you want?”

 

It’s not like he’s surprised when she pulls on his waist and angles her face toward his. He’s more than happy to oblige, kissing her hard enough to push her back into the car, and tangling his fingers in her fake hair. She pulls back and grins.

 

“I’m thinking dating scandal,” she says.

 

“Oof,” he laughs. “Don’t let them know about your smoking habit.”

 

“I quit that! The real problem is that you’re kind of beneath my status. At this stage in my career I should be dating _actors_.” She winks at him and starts to laugh.

 

“I can act.”

 

“ _Really_.”

 

“Just you wait.”

 

She’s laughing, and he feels something settle into place. A chapter of his life just came to a close when he walked out of the building behind him, and now—well, he’s not going back to the same idol-lite life he lived before. He’s going back to something new.

 

"So now what?" he asks, brushing his thumb across her temple.

 

She pushes a hand against his chest and laughs. "Let's start with getting in the car."

 

 

 

_end._


End file.
